DOCSLIB.ORG

Online Particle Physics Information 1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Online Particle Physics Information 1 Online particle physics information 1 Updated August 2015 by T. Basaglia (CERN), A. Holtkamp (CERN).† 1.Introduction............................ 1 2. ParticleDataGroup(PDG)resources. 1 3. ParticlePhysicsInformationPlatforms . .. 2 4.LiteratureDatabases . 3 5. Particle Physics Journals and Conference Proceedings Series....... 4 6.ConferenceDatabases. 5 7.ResearchInstitutions . 5 8.People .............................. 5 9.Experiments............................ 5 10.Jobs............................... 6 11.SoftwareRepositories . 7 12.Datarepositories . 9 13.Datapreservationactivities. 12 14. Particle Physics Education and Outreach Sites . .... 12 1. Introduction The collection of online information resources in particle physics and related areas presented in this chapter is of necessity incomplete. An expanded and regularly updated online version can be found at: http://library.web.cern.ch/particle physics information Suggestions for additions and updates are very welcome.† 2. Particle Data Group (PDG) resources • Review of Particle Physics (RPP) A comprehensive report on the fields of particle physics and related areas of cosmology and astrophysics, including both review articles and a compilation/evaluation of data on particle properties. The review section includes articles, tables and plots on a wide variety of theoretical and experimental topics of interest to particle physicists and astrophysicists. The particle properties section provides tables of published measurements as well as the Particle Data Groups best values and limits for particle properties such as masses, widths, lifetimes, and branching fractions, and an extensive summary of searches for hypothetical particles. RPP is published as a 1500-page book every two years, with partial updates made available once each year on the web. † Please send comments and corrections to [email protected]. C. Patrignani et al. (Particle Data Group), Chin. Phys. C, 40, 100001 (2016) October 3, 2016 15:26 2 Online particle physics information All the contents of the book version of RPP are available online: http://pdg.lbl.gov The printed book can be ordered: http://pdg.lbl.gov/2015/html/receive our products.html Of historical interest is the complete RPP collection which can be found online: http://library.web.cern.ch/PDG publications/ review particle physics • Particle Physics booklet: An abridged version of the Review of Particle Physics available as a pocket-sized 300-page booklet. Although produced in print and available online only as a PDF file, the booklet is included in this guide because it is one of the most useful summaries of physics data. The booklet contains an abbreviated set of reviews and the summary tables from the most recent edition of the Review of Particle Physics. The PDF file of the booklet can be downloaded: http://pdg.lbl.gov/current/booklet.pdf The printed booklet can be ordered: http://pdg.lbl.gov/2015/html/receive our products.html • PDGLive: A web application for browsing the contents of the PDG database that contains the information published in the Review of Particle Physics. It allows one to navigate to a particle of interest, see a summary of the information available, and then proceed to the detailed information published in the Review of Particle Physics. Data entries are directly linked to the corresponding bibliographic information in INSPIRE. http://pdglive.lbl.gov • Computer-readable files: Data files that can be downloaded from PDG include tables of particle masses and widths, PDG Monte Carlo particle numbers, and cross-section data. The files are updated with each new edition of the Review of Particle Physics. http://pdg.lbl.gov/current/html/computer read.html 3. Particle Physics Information Platforms • INSPIRE: The time-honored SPIRES database suite has in November 2011 been replaced by INSPIRE, which combines the most successful aspects of SPIRES - like comprehensive content and high-quality metadata - with the modern technology of Invenio, the CERN open-source digital-library software, offering major improvements like increased speed and Google-like free-text search syntax. INSPIRE serves as one-stop information platform for the particle physics community, comprising 8 interlinked databases on literature, conferences, institutions, journals, researchers, experiments, jobs and data. INSPIRE is jointly developed and maintained by CERN, DESY, Fermilab, IHEP and SLAC. Close interaction with the user community and with arXiv, ADS, HepData, PDG and publishers is the backbone of INSPIRE’s evolution. http://inspirehep.net/ October 3, 2016 15:26 Online particle physics information 3 INSPIRE is integrated with ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), a persistent identifier that enables researchers to connect services and get credit for their works. http://orcid.org/ INSPIRE is currently developing a new version of the portal, maintaining its quality standards and introducing new functionality. The INSPIRE Labs site is available at: http://labs.inspirehep.net blog: http://blog.inspirehep.net/ twitter: @inspirehep 4. Literature Databases • ADS: The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System is a Digital Library portal offering access to 11 million bibliographic records in Astronomy and Physics. The ADS’s search engine also indexes the full-text for approximately four million publications in this collection and tracks citations, which now amount to over 80 million links. The system also provides access and links to a wealth of external resources, including electronic articles hosted by publishers and arXiv, data catalogs and a variety of data products hosted by the astronomy archives worldwide. The ADS can be accessed at http://ads.harvard.edu/ • arXiv.org: A repository of full text papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, nonlinear sciences, quantitative finance and quantitative biology interlinked with ADS and INSPIRE. Papers are usually submitted by their authors to arXiv in advance of submission to a journal for publication. Primarily covers 1991 to the present but authors are encouraged to post older papers retroactively. Permits searching by author, title, and words in abstract and experimentally also in the fulltext. Allows limiting by subfield archive or by date. Daily update alerts by subfield are available by email and RSS. http://arXiv.org • CDS: The CERN Document Server contains records of more than 1,000,000 CERN and non-CERN articles, preprints, theses. It includes records for internal and technical notes, official CERN committee documents, and multimedia objects. CDS is going to focus on its role as institutional repository covering all CERN material from the early 50s and reflecting the holdings of the CERN library. Non-CERN particle and accelerator physics content is in the process of being exported to INSPIRE. http://cds.cern.ch • INSPIRE HEP: The HEP collection, the flagship of the INSPIRE suite, serves more than 1.1 million bibliographic records with a growing number of fulltexts attached and metadata including author affiliations, abstracts, references, experiments, keywords as well as links to arXiv, ADS, PDG, HepData and publisher platforms. It provides fast metadata and fulltext searches, plots extracted from fulltext, author disambiguation, author profile pages and citation analysis and is expanding its content to, e.g., experimental notes. http://inspirehep.net October 3, 2016 15:26 4 Online particle physics information • JACoW: The Joint Accelerator Conference Website publishes the proceedings of APAC, EPAC, PAC, IPAC, ABDW, BIW, COOL, CYCLOTRONS, DIPAC, ECRIS, FEL, HIAT, ICALEPCS, IBIC, ICAP, LINAC, North American PAC, PCaPAC, RuPAC, SRF. A custom interface allows searching on keywords, titles, authors, and in the fulltext. http://www.jacow.org/ • KISS (KEK Information Service System) for preprints: The KEK Library preprint and technical report database contains bibliographic records of preprints and technical reports held in the KEK library with links to the full text images of more than 100,000 papers scanned from their worldwide collection of preprints. Particularly useful for older scanned preprints. KISS links are included in INSPIRE HEP. http://www-lib.kek.jp/KISS/kiss prepri.html • MathSciNet: This database of almost 3 million items provides reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. Over 100,000 new items are added each year, most of them classified according to the Mathematics Subject Classification. Authors are uniquely identified, enabling a search for publications by individual author. Over 80,000 reviews on the current published literature are added each year. Citation data allows to track the history and influence of research publications. http://www.ams.org/mathscinet • OSTI SciTech Connect: A portal to free, publicly available DOE-sponsored R&D results including technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia and data information. SciTech Connect is a consolidation of two core DOE search engines, the Information Bridge and the Energy Citations Database. SciTech Connect incorporates all of the R&D information from these two products into one search interface. It includes over 2.7 million citations, including citations to 1.5 million journal articles. SciTech Connect also has over 400,000 full-text DOE sponsored STI reports; most of these are post-1991, but over 140,000 of the reports were published prior to 1990. http://www.osti.gov/scitech/ 5. Particle Physics Journals and Conference Proceedings
Load more

Recommended publications
  • CONTENTS Group Membership, January 2002 2
    CONTENTS Group Membership, January 2002 2 APPENDIX 1: Report on Activities 2000-2002 & Proposed Programme 2002-2006 4 1OPAL 4 2H1 7 3 ATLAS 11 4 BABAR 19 5DØ 24 6 e-Science 29 7 Geant4 32 8 Blue Sky and applied R&D 33 9 Computing 36 10 Activities in Support of Public Understanding of Science 38 11 Collaborations and contacts with Industry 41 12 Other Research Related Activities by Group Members 41 13 Staff Management and Implementation of Concordat 41 APPENDIX 2: Request for Funds 1. Support staff 43 2. Travel 55 3. Consumables 56 4. Equipment 58 APPENDIX 3: Publications 61 1 Group Membership, May 2002 Academic Staff Dr John Allison Senior Lecturer Professor Roger Barlow Professor Dr Ian Duerdoth Senior Lecturer Dr Mike Ibbotson Reader Dr George Lafferty Reader Dr Fred Loebinger Senior Lecturer Professor Robin Marshall Professor, Group Leader Dr Terry Wyatt Reader Dr A N Other (from Sept 2002) Lecturer Fellows Dr Brian Cox PPARC Advanced Fellow Dr Graham Wilson (leave of absence for 2 yrs) PPARC Advanced Fellow James Weatherall PPARC Fellow PPARC funded Research Associates∗ Dr Nick Malden Dr Joleen Pater Dr Michiel Sanders Dr Ben Waugh Dr Jenny Williams PPARC funded Responsive Research Associate Dr Liang Han PPARC funded e-Science Research Associates Steve Dallison core e-Science Sergey Dolgobrodov core e-Science Gareth Fairey EU/PPARC DataGrid Alessandra Forti GridPP Andrew McNab EU/PPARC DataGrid PPARC funded Support Staff∗ Phil Dunn (replacement) Technician Andrew Elvin Technician Dr Joe Foster Physicist Programmer Julian Freestone
    [Show full text]
  • The Discovery of the Higgs Boson at the LHC
    Chapter 6 The Discovery of the Higgs Boson at the LHC Peter Jenni and Tejinder S. Virdee 6.1 Introduction and the Standard Model The standard model of particle physics (SM) is a theory that is based upon principles of great beauty and simplicity. The theory comprises the building blocks of visible matter, the fundamental fermions: quarks and leptons, and the fundamental bosons that mediate three of the four fundamental interactions; photons for electromag- netism, the W and Z bosons for the weak interaction and gluons for the strong interaction (Fig. 6.1). The SM provides a very successful description of the visible universe and has been verified in many experiments to a very high precision. It has an enormous range of applicability and validity. So far no significant deviations have been observed experimentally. The possibility of installing a proton-proton accelerator in the LEP tunnel, after the e+e− programme, was being discussed in the 1980’s. At the time there were many profound open questions in particle physics, and several are still present. In simple terms these are: what is the origin of mass i.e. how do fundamental particles acquire mass, and why do they have the masses that they have? Why is there more matter than anti-matter? What is dark matter? What is the path towards unification of all forces? Do we live in a world with more space-time dimensions than the familiar four? The LHC [1, 2] was conceived to address or shed light on these questions. P. Jenni CERN, Geneva, Switzerland Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany T.
    [Show full text]
  • ANTIMATTER a Review of Its Role in the Universe and Its Applications
    A review of its role in the ANTIMATTER universe and its applications THE DISCOVERY OF NATURE’S SYMMETRIES ntimatter plays an intrinsic role in our Aunderstanding of the subatomic world THE UNIVERSE THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS C.D. Anderson, Anderson, Emilio VisualSegrè Archives C.D. The beginning of the 20th century or vice versa, it absorbed or emitted saw a cascade of brilliant insights into quanta of electromagnetic radiation the nature of matter and energy. The of definite energy, giving rise to a first was Max Planck’s realisation that characteristic spectrum of bright or energy (in the form of electromagnetic dark lines at specific wavelengths. radiation i.e. light) had discrete values The Austrian physicist, Erwin – it was quantised. The second was Schrödinger laid down a more precise that energy and mass were equivalent, mathematical formulation of this as described by Einstein’s special behaviour based on wave theory and theory of relativity and his iconic probability – quantum mechanics. The first image of a positron track found in cosmic rays equation, E = mc2, where c is the The Schrödinger wave equation could speed of light in a vacuum; the theory predict the spectrum of the simplest or positron; when an electron also predicted that objects behave atom, hydrogen, which consists of met a positron, they would annihilate somewhat differently when moving a single electron orbiting a positive according to Einstein’s equation, proton. However, the spectrum generating two gamma rays in the featured additional lines that were not process. The concept of antimatter explained. In 1928, the British physicist was born.
    [Show full text]
  • Neutrino Physics Was Certainly Major.'Xxii
    Neutrino FRANK CLOSE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©Frank Close 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number 2010930302 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays Ltd, St Ives ISBN 978-0-19-957459-9 Contents Ray Davis Foreword 1.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Scent of Glue
    On the scent of glue by Frank Close Although this work was not new Soon after the quark model was in­ has been intensifying over the last for the specialists, the underlying vented twenty years ago, people re­ several years. Where have all the message was clear. 'Because of its alized that it was in trouble. The Pauli flowers gone? inherent singularities, classical gen­ exclusion principle ruled out many eral relativity predicts its own down­ well known states, in particular the How colour forces work fall,' stated Hawking, 'just as the configuration of three identical classical picture of the atom was also strange quarks that formed the ome­ Electrical charges are the sources doomed'. ga-minus. The very hadron whose of electromagnetic forces. As every The meeting merited two closing discovery had confirmed the Eight­ schoolchild knows, opposite char­ lectures. For the cosmologists, Mar­ fold Way seemingly killed its off­ ges attract while like charges repel. tin Rees of Cambridge confessed to spring, the quark model. Quarks possess electric charge and finding the symposium an 'unusual In those days, many people were so feel electromagnetic forces. That experience'. For the particle physi­ reluctant to accept the idea of frac­ is why even electrically uncharged cists, John Ellis described particle tionally charged quarks which had particles like neutrons have electro­ physics and cosmology as having 'a never been seen. The Pauli paradox magnetic interactions; they contain brilliant past in front of them' — refer­ suggested that quarks were at best electrically charged constituents. ring to the new common interest in no more than a bookkeeping device, Quarks also have colour and it ap­ the primaeval Big Bang and its imme­ not physical particles.
    [Show full text]
  • Lessons from a Master
    THE EXETER COLLEGE MAGAZINE ISSUE 14 AUTUMN 2011 WWW.EXETER.OX.AC.UK/ALUMNI LESSONS FROM A MASTER PHILIP PULLMAN ON WHAT MAKES A GOOD STORY REINVENTING TELEVISION JON GISBY ON HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS COMMUNICATION THE TWO AFRICAS KOFI ANNAN VISITS EXETER PLUS: EZEKIEL EMANUEL ON US HEALTHCARE REFORM, TWITTER CO-FOUNDER BIZ STONE TALKS BUSINESS, FRANK CLOSE GETS A FRONT ROW SEAT AT THE BOAT RACE, AND MORE… WELCOME TO EXON Contents Editorial Rector’s Letter Frances Cairncross, Rector College News ince arriving in post three months ago, I Fundraising have been aware of a tremendous S A Day in the Life of the Junior Dean Philanthropy in the Fee-paying Era responsibility to deliver Exon on time and to a t seems appropriate that this year’s ending a successful tour by singing at We began with a talk on the prospects for Michelle Fernandes p4 Katrina Hancock p32 standard of which the College can be proud. issue of Exon is built around the mass in St Mark’s Cathedral. Africa by that great Ghanaian and public A Very Exonian Boat Race Not So Different, After All Punctuality can be measured, but what of theme of communication, since Now we are looking forward to two servant, Kofi Annan, former Secretary- Frank Close p5 Katharina Neill p33 I quality? The question I have tried to consider one of the main tasks of the College is milestones. One will be our occupation, General of the United Nations. We are A Tale of Two Africas Happy Holidays throughout has been “what is Exon’s purpose?” to teach and promote the skills that in autumn 2012, of our new site on planning more over the next three years.
    [Show full text]
  • Starting A-Level Physics in Sept 2020…. Consider Reading One Or More of the Following Books to Inspire You Over the Summer
    Starting A-level Physics in Sept 2020…. Consider reading one or more of the following books to inspire you over the summer. Some are Physics based, some are more Engineering orientated. Suggested summer reading list: Physics and Engineering • The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman (also available to watch) • A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli • Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall • Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh • Engineering: A Beginner's Guide by Natasha McCarthy • To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski • What if? by Randell Monroe • Particle Physics Brick by Brick by Ben Still • A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson • The Universe speaks in numbers by Graham Farmelo • Storm in a teacup by Helen Czerski • The Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramirez • Emperor's new mind by Roger Penrose • What do you care what other people think by Richard Feymann • The God effect by Brian Clegg • The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene • Hyperspace by Michio Kaku • The particle at the end of the Universe by Sean Carroll • The Quantum Universe: everything that can happen does happen by Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw • (anything else…) by Carlo Rovelli • How to teach your dog quantum numbers by Chad Orzel • Neutrino by Frank Close • The Gecko’s Foot by Peter Forbes • Structures – or why things don’t fall down by JE Gordon • Cats Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of nature and people by Steven Vogel • PHD Comics (phd_comics at Instragram or @PHDcomics on twitter) Or consider a MOOC: Engage in a spot of independent study on a topic of your choice.
    [Show full text]
  • (Formerly Theoretical Physics Seminars) 18 Oct 1965 Dr JM Charap
    PHYSICS DEPARTMENT SEMINARS (formerly Theoretical Physics Seminars) 18 Oct 1965 Dr J M Charap (QMC) Report on the Oxford Conference on elementary particle physics 25 Oct 1965 Prof M E Fisher (King's) A new approach to statistical mechanics 1 Nov 1965 Dr J P Elliott (Sussex) Charge independent pairing correlations in nuclei 8 Nov 1965 Prof A B Pippard (Cambridge) Conduction electrons in strong magnetic field 15 Nov 1965 Prof R E Peierls (Oxford) Realistic forces and finite nuclei 22 Nov 1965 Dr T W B Kibble (Imperial) Broken symmetries 29 Nov 1965 Prof G Gamow (Colorado and Cambridge) Cosmological theories 6 Dec 1965 Prof D Bohm (Birkbeck) Collective coordinates in phase space 13 Dec 1965 Dr D J Rowe (Harwell) Time-dependent Hartree-Fock theory and vibrational models 17 Jan 1966 Prof J M Ziman (Bristol) Band structure: the Greenian method and the t-matrix 24 Jan 1966 Dr T P McLean (Malvern) Lasers and their radiation 31 Jan 1966 Prof E J Squires (Durham) The bootstrap theory of elementary particles 7 Feb 1966 Prof G Feldman (Johns Hopkins and Imperial) Current commutators and coupling constants 14 Feb 1966 Dr W E Parry (Oxford) Momentum distribution in liquid helium 21 Feb 1966 Dr O Penrose (Imperial) Inequalities for the ground state of an interacting Bose system 7 Mar 1966 Dr P K Kabir (Rutherford) μ-mesonic molecules 14 Mar 1966 Prof L R B Elton (Battersea) Towards a realistic shell model potential 21 Mar 1966 Prof I M Khalatnikov (Moscow) Stability of a lattice of vortices 2 May 1966 Dr G H Burkhardt (Birmingham) High energy scattering
    [Show full text]
  • CERN Courier – Digital Edition Welcome to the Digital Edition of the December 2013 Issue of CERN Courier
    I NTERNATIONAL J OURNAL OF H IGH -E NERGY P HYSICS CERNCOURIER WELCOME V OLUME 5 3 N UMBER 1 0 D ECEMBER 2 0 1 3 CERN Courier – digital edition Welcome to the digital edition of the December 2013 issue of CERN Courier. This edition celebrates a number of anniversaries. Starting with the “oldest”, 2013 saw the centenary of the birth of Bruno Pontecorvo, whose life and Towards the contributions to neutrino physics were celebrated with a symposium in Rome in September. Moving forwards, it is the 50th anniversary of the Institute for intensity frontier High Energy Physics in Protvino, Russia, and also of CESAR – CERN’s first storage ring, which saw the first beam in December 1963 and paved the way for the LHC. More recently, a new network for mathematical and theoretical physics started up 10 years ago, re-establishing connections between scientists in the Balkans. At the same time, the longer-standing CERN School of Computing began a phase of reinvigoration. There is also a selection of books for more relaxed reading during the festive season. To sign up to the new-issue alert, please visit: http://cerncourier.com/cws/sign-up. To subscribe to the magazine, the e-mail new-issue alert, please visit: http://cerncourier.com/cws/how-to-subscribe. JUBILEE ALICE SCIENCE IN IHEP, Protvino, Forward muons celebrates its join the upgrade THE BALKANS EDITOR: CHRISTINE SUTTON, CERN 50th anniversary programme The story behind a DIGITAL EDITION CREATED BY JESSE KARJALAINEN/IOP PUBLISHING, UK p28 p6 physics network p21 CERNCOURIER www. V OLUME 5 3 N UMBER 1 0 D ECEMBER 2 0 1 3 CERN Courier December 2013 Contents Covering current developments in high-energy physics and related fi elds worldwide CERN Courier is distributed to member-state governments, institutes and laboratories affi liated with CERN, and to their personnel.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletter, December 2017
    NEWSLETTER Inside this issue: Report from our chairman Happy New Year Dr Yoshi Uchida IOP HEPP group prize winners from the IOP HEPP Dr Marco Gersabeck Anita Nandi committee! This Year’s IOP Half Day Workshops Student and Junior Researcher Conference Funds Meet the Committee The annual joint meeting of the IOP High Energy Particle Physics group and the IOP Astroparticle Physics group. Dates: 26 - 28 March 2018 http://appandhepp2018.iopconfs.org Follow us! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IOPHEPP/ Twitter: @IOP_HEPP, https://twitter.com/IOP_HEPP Website: http://hepp.iop.org IOP HEPP GROUP NEWSLETTER ISSUE 15 December 2017 Report from our chairman Dr. Yoshi Uchida, Imperial College London Welcome to the HEPP group newsletter for 2017. This year I am delighted to be able to introduce two new members who have joined our committee following the elections held earlier on; Agni Bethani of the University of Manchester, and Chris Parkinson of the University of Birmingham. They are both Research Associates and have jointly taken on the roles of newsletter editor and social media representative— and I would like to thank them for the stellar job they have done. Thanks are also due to Jarek Nowak, who edited the newsletter for the last couple of years. As we welcome new members, we do have to say farewell to others, but this year it is for a reason that we can celebrate, as our two student reps move on after obtaining their PhDs. Kevin Maguire and Darren Scott have served the committee admirably since they joined four years ago, influencing our discussions and giving us a social media presence.
    [Show full text]
  • Particles and Nuclei in PANIC
    Particles and nuclei The opening addresses at the International in PANIC Conference on Particles and Nuclei (PANIC) held in Kyoto from 20-24 April were given by (left to right) Y. Yamaguchi (Tokai, President of the Physical Society of Japan), H. Feshbach (MIT, Chairman of the Nuclear Physics Commission of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics), and T. Yamazaki (INS Tokyo, the Conference Chairman). PANIC is the triennal International Conference on Particles and Nuclei, and judging from the latest PANIC, held in Kyoto from 20-24 April there is no need for panic yet. Faced with two pictures — one of nuclei described in nucléon and meson terms, and another of nu­ cléons containing quarks and gluons — physicists are intrigued to know what new insights from the quark level can tell us about nuclear physics, or vice versa. Summing up at Kyoto, Sir Denys Wilkinson of Sussex suspected it was too early to reconcile the two pictures. Explanations for nuclear effects do not yet demand quarks and gluons, he maintained. As long as traditional approaches work, we do not need to resort to quarks, which 'mind their own business inside hadrons.' Account­ quantum chromodynamics (QCD the 'EMC Effect' — a variation of ing for the apparent resilience of — the field theory of quarks and nucléon quark structure with the nucléons in nuclei is a more press­ gluons) on nuclear physics was surrounding nuclear environment. ing problem. taken up by R. Jaffe of MIT. He 'Quark properties do vary,' claimed Earlier in the conference there suspected that the bridge between Jaffe, but suspected that some or had been much debate about poss­ the quark/gluon picture and the most of the observed effect could ible nuclear effects in nucléon meson/baryon approach might be be explained by nuclear binding.
    [Show full text]
  • In 1900 Nobody Could Have Even Dreamed of the Way in Which
    MILLENNIUM The electron century In 1900 nobody could have even dreamed of the way in which science would evolve over the 100 years that followed.Theorist and science writer Frank Close reviews the past century and looks forward to the next. Going back to the beginning of time - a simulation of physics at CERN's LHC collider. If the structure of DNA and the nature of life qualify as the most pro­ would use this tool to resolve the structure of DNA. What many would found discoveries of the 20th century, what will be those of the next? regard as the most profound discovery in biology is, by many read­ Such are the questions beloved by pundits as the calendar turns in ers of CERN Courier, recognized as applied physics. this special year. We know that these questions are unanswerable. Genetics in the 21st century is likely to be as revolutionary as However, to appreciate quite how unpredictable the future is, it may electronics has been in the 20th century. It is electronics, and all be worth imagining that we were being asked such a question else that has flowed from the discovery of the electron, that touches 100 years ago. most people in our field today. In the late 19th century some scientists believed that the basic principles of physics had been discovered and only the details Nature's fundamental pieces remained to be worked through. An outstanding problem - the J J Thomson marched into the Royal Institution on the 30 April 1897 apparently perverse behaviour of the spectrum of radiation emitted and announced his discovery of the electron, a fundamental con­ by hot bodies - was solved 100 years ago with the invention of stituent of all atomic elements.
    [Show full text]